Fees and services

State Government’s new Fee Unit Model

The Queensland Government has introduced a new Fee Unit Model (the model) under Queensland Treasury’s Principles for Fees and Charges policy. The Fee Unit Model changes the mechanism for how fees are updated annually to reflect indexation.

The Department of Environment and Science’s (department) prescribed regulatory fees have been updated to reflect the new model. The model replaces fee dollars with a set fee unit, with the fee unit value prescribed in the Acts Interpretation Act 1954 (AIA).

Under the AIA the fee unit value set for 2021–22 fees was 1 fee unit = $1.00, meaning a prescribed regulatory fee of $6.75 in 2021–22 equalled 6.75 fee units.

Annual fee indexation for 2022–23 has been made to the AIA and commences on 1 July 2022 using the Government Indexation Rate (GIR) of 2.5%. The 2022-23 fee unit value in the AIA is now 1 fee unit = $1.025.

In the above example, the 2022–23 fee unit dollar value for 6.75 fee units is $6.90. (6.75 x $1.025 = 6.9188 rounded to 6.90).

Department prescribed regulations contain the dollar value rounding rule which must be applied when calculating the new fee unit dollar value for all regulatory and non-regulatory fees. Other department publications and receipting systems will continue to reference fee dollars for all regulatory and non-regulatory fees as well.